Once upon a time, there was a very smart man, Ira Magaziner, who devised a 1000-page plan — dubbed the Greenhouse Compact — to reinvent Rhode Island’s flagging economy by using $750 million in public investment to seed the high-tech businesses and high-wage jobs of the future. Yet despite broad support across business and labor, voters resoundingly rejected the plan because of concerns about prototypical Ocean State insider dealing.

That was in 1984.

Magaziner went on to work in the Clinton White House and to become a prosperous consultant. Yet 24 years later, the need to reinvent Rhode Island’s economic infrastructure — which remains anemic compared with most of its neighbors in New England — is more urgent than ever.

With a crushing $434 million deficit looming for the next fiscal year, the situation is exacerbated by how Rhode Island is just one of nine US states in a recession.

To name a few key indicators, the state is shedding jobs and residents; infrastructure is crumbling (weight restrictions have been placed on a few bridges, including one on Interstate 95 in Pawtucket); and corruption remains a concern (as seen by the ongoing trial in US District Court of two former officials with drug-store giant CVS, one of the few large corporations headquartered here).

All in all, things haven’t been this dire locally since the credit union crisis of the early ’90s.

Rhode Island has long since shed its image as a smudge on the way to Cape Cod, and, as always, the state has some key advantages — including its location between Boston and New York — upon which to draw.

The seemingly intractable nature of the Ocean State’s money problems, however, has led Leonard Lardaro, a professor of economics at the University of Rhode Island, to aptly dub the state “Rhode Island and Sisyphus Plantations.”

The recurrent cycle is evident in a series of key contradictions:

• The state desperately needs economic development, but NIMBYism tends to stand in the way of capital improvements — a container port, airport expansion, and so on — that could generate jobs and related activity.

• Economic development officials envision an “innovation economy,” but students at the state’s decaying urban schools continue to under-perform.

• Perhaps most symbolically, Rhode Island’s smallness is seen as its catalytic “secret sauce” by Saul Kaplan, executive director of the state Economic Development Corporation (EDC), yet parochialism and tradition persistently preclude efforts to boost efficiency by consolidating and regionalizing state and local government.

It’s enough to make one wonder, as Jimmy Breslin titled his book about the 1962 New York Mets — one of the worst teams in baseball history — “Can’t anybody here play this game?” (Even by this historic standard of incompetence, Rhode Island compares poorly; the Mets unexpectedly became world champions seven years later, in 1969 — in less than a third of the time that has elapsed since voters rejected the Greenhouse Compact.)

So, will the state continue on its current path, taking the proverbial two steps forward and three steps back?

Unplugged An argument can made that just as the Industrial Revolution was sparked in Rhode Island, so, too, did the withering of the Industrial Age.

State of the State House coverage Adam Reilly made an erroneous assumption when he bemoaned the loss of State House news coverage with the downsizing of the Boston Globe . Fortunately, Boston is still a two-newspaper town.

Carcieri’s challenges As Governor Donald L. Carcieri celebrated his 64th birthday on December 16, he could take satisfaction in any number of things.

State house stalemate Many Rhode Islanders take an almost visceral delight in those occasions when a state worker is shown to be goofing off on the public’s dime.

Does Rhode Island need tax cuts for the rich? A lot more than just the minutiae of $6.6 billion in state spending will be on the line when the General Assembly soon presents its response to Governor Donald L. Carcieri’s latest budget.

Casino battle royale The casino battle has been raging for so long that it often seems like a permanent part of the Rhode Island landscape.

How will speaker Murphy use his power? It was no big surprise when House Speaker William J. Murphy recently presented his wife, Stacey, with a bunch of roses — as thanks, he said, for the nights he had missed dinner while working late at the State House.

RHODY'S LOCAL FOOD MOVEMENT FINDS ITS GROOVE | February 23, 2009 Five years ago, when Farm Fresh Rhode Island (FFRI) launched its mission of promoting Ocean State-produced food, co-founder Noah Fulmer discovered a curious disconnection in the local food chain.

TICKET TO RIDE | February 11, 2009 In April 1999, two weeks after I started on the job at the Providence Phoenix , the FBI raided City Hall, formally unveiling the federal investigation that would land Vincent A. "Buddy" Cianci Jr., Rhode Island's rascal king, behind bars.

ADVOCATES RENEW PUSH FOR PUBLICLY-FINANCED RI ELECTIONS | February 04, 2009 During a news conference Tuesday afternoon in the State House rotunda, proponents of significantly expanding publicly financed elections in Rhode Island — a concept they call "Fair Elections" — cited a litany of reasons for why it would be good for the Ocean State and its citizens.

THE UPSIDE OF HOPE IN RHODE ISLAND | January 29, 2009 Everywhere one turns these days, there's seemingly more bad news about Rhode Island: the unemployment rate, one of the highest in the nation, tops 10 percent — and the state's running out of unemployment assistance.